MD_Source

Dimension

Source of electricity, water, natural gas, etc. The primary purpose of this table is to provide a general indication of whether the source of a thing being measured is internal/Carleton College or external/some other vendor or Unknown.

This table is maintained by hand, since it rarely changes, and when it does, it's because somebody wants a change (not because a system of record changes). It records the source of the thing measured, not the device that measures it or the system from which the measurement is extracted.

The notion of a 'source' is deliberately vague, and gives us a way (beyond the vendor), to subgroup water, steam, electricity, etc. measurements. There is also an MD_Vendor table, but it is too specific to be of use in all cases, and we may not even have enough information to link it up properly to measured data.

In the case of power we generate at Carleton, e.g., via a wind turbine, the source is 'Carleton College.'

There is a generic 'Unknown' row here, for cases when we think the source is unknown or not applicable, as, e.g., in the case of ambient temperature, humidity, and wind speed measurements taken at Carleton's general weather station.